Swanee sung by Al Jolson 

Not totally frowned upon!

I grew up on all the old movies and music. My parents home. One tv in house. I have a great appreciation for most music. Thanks to my parents. 😊

What's better about then, than being alive now?

@@cjbuysMusic i rather live back then than now now is a dump

Correct, Everything thing about him, the charisma, the informality, the personality, the electricity, the excitement came from within him, in blackface or not!

Amen to that. I thought he was racist the first time I saw him but he had so much talent and it caplivated me. (If you haven't guessed yet, I'm black).

@@solnixtellsall You knew nothing about any of the history of blackface, the history of the darker complexioned races in America when you saw this for the first time, or you did? Ditto Al Jolson, or any other re blackface please?

I knew that most people were trying to downgrade and hurt black people, so I assumed that Al Jolson did. Then I did research and found out that he was Jewish and that blackface was his way of connecting with black people. Al stood up for many African-American people in his lifetime.

@@solnixtellsall Thank you dear Lady! As somebody born in 1950 in Australia, I have no experience/Knowledge or understanding, a first hand one I mean. of the plight, or otherwise of blacks in America, or Europe. Only the variable I get via news, social media etc. I did grow up, went to Sunday school etc with well respected aboriginals, The Doug Nicholls family locally, and again via news, studies etc, know about White Australian policy, the current Indigenous voice proposal here etc. I don't know, or can do anything about the entire all races getting along. All I know is anybody, different to me, I have got generally along with, and if there has been any differences, it has been things like, who is the better singer, sports player/ team, food, whatever??, I cannot speak for everybody, but it has never got into a black ,or white, where one was born etc etc thing! Al Jolson, I got to be drawn to him, mostly by hearing his 1940's records, Relatives had of my Parent's generation, Others just enjoying singing along with them, around the same time, they were doing the same, for the INK Spots. Mills Brothers, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby etc etc - All like Al Jolson had great standard hit songs, most everybody loved. In times when radio dominated in Australia, so a colored focus on, other than 45 rpm, and LPs coming out a bit later, then TV here from 1956 on, but the focus was not on color, and I think generally non white artists were treated very well here, Sammy Davis, Ella Fitzgerald. Chuck Berry, Shirley Bassey, etc. It was really the same with Al Jolson up till about the 21st Century, there was just no focus, in any way, on the blackface, other than one day a sales person of some kind, came into my home, in the 1980's maybe? and I had a stature of Al In Blackface, and obvious to get in my good books, he responded to the Statue, I JUST LOVE SATCHO ARMSTRONG! Personally myself, I am not over the moon, about Minstrelsy, Blackface, or never have been, as an art Entertainment form I mean, all the other horror attached to it, not Entertainment, related there is so much variation, I just don't know. I also have questioned myself, why did it need to happen, but the answer to that is lost in the midst of time. It sees logical to me, that representing somebody that is different than yourself, or something, type of Animal, Whatever, in Entertainment, or otherwise, via color change, Features of that part of Nature, Buffalo horns, whatever, you would do your best to get as close as possible. There would be the seeds of what in the 17th to early 20th Century became the seeds of the Blackface/Minstrelsy thing in basically America, and spread to England and elsewhere. Times certainly with the Atlantic Slave Trade. Civil War, Into Jim Crow etc, that generally existing documentation suggests, was mostly not good for non whites, that generally had the upper hand, but there were also whites on the side of blacks, abolitionists etc, some starting the movement, and if one cares to look into all this history, all to do with all that happened in those times, some white was anti all black, or vice versa, whilst some were anti their color, and there was like now, some that were just for all humanity in general. Sadly there is too many then, and still in the first catagories. Al Jolson did blackface, after it had been established for about 50 years. In 1904 at a time, that, wrongly so, generally via the media, government of the time etc, broadly black people. unless they were somebody like Scott Joplin. Booker T Washington, ETC, was to most, presumed to be secondary.. In Entertainment by the way, Blacks were making good process in Opera, Vaudeville etc. Al over the 25 - 30 years he did Blackface, mostly. Literally all indication is that his delivery was not about degradation, mock, insult humiliation, any thing like that. Certainly there was the comical aspect to it, where digs at this or that one comes into it, but done in a way, that put everybody on an equal level. There is a great sequence in his 1930 movie, BIG BOY. Al Jolson in blackface playing his often used stage persona GUS. A real black actor is carrying a load of luggage, of which Al States, 'We sure are carrying a load'!.. The black actor gives him a look WE?? Then Al Tells a joke about being dismissed from school, on account of pneumonia, not being able to spell it, The black actor gives him a. " YOUR A NUT LOOK"! The dig is actually on AL. That movie by the way, is with only one exception is the first time, an entire black cast was used in a white Controlled movie. Al often had blacks in his movies. His rapport with ,just forget his name, in Hallelujah I'm A Bum 1933 is unique. Big Boy by the way, mocks are thrown around by Al generally on everybody. It, ALTHOUGH A VERY AVERAGE MOVIE, overall gives a good indication of Al in his stage days of Entertaining in blackface, BY the way the last 20 years of his life, he pretty well never did it much at all, but still was just as effective! There is grey areas certainly in some of the movie clips, pertaining to earlier times, the 19th Century, Swanee River etc, where dialogue, looks etc is questionable, but generally not, He is just performing a number, which now looks out of place, but in it's time, was how it was done, and to see only bad in it, one has to link it with all the atrocities to blacks of the time, or before. THE BIG PROBLEM with him now is the BLACKNESS OF THE PASSAGE OF TIME, not HIS FACE. HE has passed over 72 years, and although he returned again in the mid 1940's as the Biggest star again in SHOWBIZ, his greatest years were prior to when technology, electronics took over, all though he acquitted himself well in it. He is till seen as this ancient star, from a time, so unrelated to the technology, electronics, we have enjoyed and been accepted of, for many many decades now. That is why media, and all connected with it, promotors, publicists, marketer's, public relations people constantly blurt out fabricated, unproven, speculated anti propaganda against him, just to frighten, threaten people away, in a need of protecting their contemporary profit! He was not the perfect human being or anything, no body, nothing is, BUT he was not is not the MONSTROSITY THAT is GENERALLY YELLED OUT NOW, by those controlling our likes, or dislikes, and certainly not just by wearing blackface For more about him www.jolson.org aljolson.weebly.com. Minstrels/Blackface _ Look up the works of Tim Brooks, have a Great Easter./Passover whatever?

What are you doing here then?

@@margaretthomas8899 Do you mean it should be off limits?

@@strutherhill No, it just baffles me, why you were attracted to it at all, if you find it Grotesque?